


Ghosts

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: (again), Caves, F/M, Friendsim references, Gen, Joey has complicated feelings, M/M, accidental cave adventure, and Xefros talks to a ghost, on the road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 18:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Joey Claire saw her first ghost deep in the dripping, crystalline web of an alien cave.





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> It's been too long since I've written something with both Xefros AND Joey in it. I've been working on this in the background of stuff for a while, but... Now, NOW it has come into the light. :P Thank you very much for reading it, if you do, and I hope you like it! I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made. :)
> 
> Have a great day!!

Joey Claire saw her first ghost deep in the dripping, crystalline web of an alien cave.  She was trailing a little bit behind her equally alien companion, at the time, but only because his sloth-ish guardian was still limping and she’d wanted to walk right next to him, of course!  Xefros wanted to look out for the big guy, too, obviously, but he was  _also_  especially concerned with getting them all at least somewhat less lost underground.  Joey had already grabbed at his arm once or twice, smoothing down the disguise-coat he’d picked up a few cities back and trying to calm his frantic, mumbling “ _We’re gonna die_ ”-style commentary.

Xefros seemed genuinely reassured when she squeezed his arm, but that might’ve been mostly because of the “Cultural Differences” and “Human Friendship” ideas he was doing his best to understand.  Really, that pity and comfort should’ve belonged to his moirail, he said.  His pale-romance boyfriend, who Joey was still not sure she cared for.  No, sir.  And not only because she sometimes imagined what it would be like if Xefros insisted on turning to  _her_  for comfort... If he swept the wavy dark hair behind her ear every now and then and brushed his hand soothingly against her cheek, the way she’d seen “moirails” doing on alien TV plenty of times by now.

It was hard to imagine Xefros’s pale-romance boyfriend being so tender and soft with him – what with all the orders he gave, apparently, and the reverent, apology-choked way Xefros talked about him – but Xefros insisted he was.  Sometimes.  Xefros’s voice got wistful and tangled, talking about Dammek, honestly.  He stumbled over his words a lot more often, and sometimes a crease appeared between his eyebrows that Joey wasn’t sure he noticed.  Dammek was a frantic heartbeat, to Xefros.  He was pounding music when you were supposed to be asleep and the skin-boiling alien sun was out and about, just waiting to cook you.  He was spikes on clothes that Joey might not have ever thought to put spikes on, and he was so far away even though Xefros might have been thinking about him all the time, from everything  _Joey_  knew.

Maybe Dammek really _was_ what Xefros wanted.  Joey couldn’t say, not completely, whatever words she ended up spitting out every now and then.  She did know it meant a lot whenever Xefros managed to shuffle off the insecurities Dammek had (possibly not-on-purpose?) helped fester inside him…  When Xefros was open and honest with her, and not ashamed of himself at all. That sort of thing definitely happened, as their journey wound on.  Joey _knew_ the way Xefros had looked at her when he felt her fingers twining into his had mattered – they’d been standing in front of something especially terrifying, that night, but she’d reached for him and he’d reached back.  She’d known they were standing against that something as equals.  Standing together.

Oh, well.

They were in this dang cave, at the  _present_  moment, and the walls were slick like dark mirrors folded all around them – slabs of rock that Joey could see her face half-reflected in, sometimes, like a smeared-away painting.  There was bioluminescent moss slithering on the ceiling, too, coiling into intricate patterns Joey had to believe carried some sort of inscrutable meaning in them.  Also, of course, there were lots of things Xefros had to be careful not to trip over making his way in the front.  He kept stubbing his toes or stepping in mysterious puddle-holes... Disturbing the sightless, see-through fish waiting there, with their fluttering hearts showing right through their scales.  Disturbing dark water that may not have sloshed out of that particular hole for longer than Joey had been alive.  Maybe decades.  Maybe centuries, the deeper into the cave they got.

Joey shuddered, when she’d first thought of something like that.  She’d considered some of the ancient artifacts her Pa had dragged out of tombs and underground catacombs and wherever else he went...  Disturbed, lurking things that had lined her hallways and crowded her closets growing up.  The emotional connection was so familiar and so alien all at once, but she hadn’t said a word about it, yet.  Maybe she’d say something later, when Xefros asked her for her thoughts.  He usually asked if she was doing okay once things had settled, some, after a weird run-around day like this.

They’d been attacked out in the world beyond that cave, actually – or, more like, they’d stumbled across the edge of what looked like a battle-game.  Some jerk alien with a sci-fi looking screen in front of his face and a big swooshy coat had monologued at them for a minute about how hilarious it was that they’d brought their lusus-es – guardian animals, as Joey had learned. Or you know, giant monster parents? – to the battleground, and then zapped Xefros’s Sloth-Dad with his fancy eye lightning.  He would’ve seared off more of the poor sloth’s soft white fur, too, if Joey hadn’t thrown herself at him in a jazzy ballap twirl, wielding her flashlight and knocking the guy just a little bit off balance.

Sloth-dad had rumbled in pain, and then heaved up a huge arm to try swiping at the zappy big-coat guy, too...  But thankfully Dammek’s lusus had bounded up the cliffside next to them, by that point – Deercat-Dad kicked enough rocks down onto the zappy guy that he felt mocked and just _had_ to investigate.  Apparently this also meant he had to summon his blood-dripping reinforcements/girlfriend over from where she was currently tearing somebody’s bones out through their skin. Fun!  Another fun day on a fun alien dystopia-planet where Joey had mysteriously wound up after her home was overrun by monsters.

Anyway, Deercat-Dad had leapt almost playfully away, as if he’d gotten a lot of practice doing very similar sneaky things before...  Which made a lot of sense, considering pretty much everything Joey’d ever heard about Dammek...  And they’d all taken the opportunity to throw themselves into the nearest cave.  Xefros had been laughing nervously – a strangled, muttering laugh – and Joey had already been rifling around through her alien veterinary bag... Or really,  _Dammek’s_  alien veterinary bag...  To make sure she had enough ointment to treat Sloth-Dad’s new burns.

Which, she did.  Don’t worry.  But only barely, and she wouldn’t have had enough to reapply in the suggested five to six alien hours.  That was gonna prove to be a real problem soon enough, if she and Xefros couldn’t find another cave exit.  The way they’d come in was blocked by lots of eye lightning-scorched rocks, now, and who knew what was waiting for them on the other side?

There had to be another way out, though, and not too, _too_ far away.  Some sort of distant breeze kept ruffling Deercat-Dad’s fur, and the lusus-es had both turned away from the pile of smoking eye-laser rocks like,  _“Welp. I guess it’s time to go out the backdoor,”_ as if it were no big deal at all.

Joey figured they were all in agreement here – in that it would be best for everyone if they found that elusive backdoor _soon_ …  Which was maybe why she raised her eyebrows and propped a hand on her hip when Xefros paused for a while to admire a pile of bones.  Her Pa just _loved_ _collecting_ interesting bones.  Joey thought maybe they should stop and bury these ones, sure, but she also knew Xefros probably wasn’t thinking anything like that.

People didn’t bury their dead, on that alien world.  On Alternia.  Not anymore, at least.  It was a world without any flowers on graves, without any carved tombstones, without any statues faithfully guarding a loved one’s patch of dirt.  Or, you know, people preserved with careful, apparently-affectionate taxidermy and kept propped up in their family’s homes, the way Joey’s Pa said was “traditional.”  At least…  If people were running around doing _that_ , Xefros didn’t seem to know about it.

But now, though, Xefros considered the bones and chewed on his lip.  He’d glanced back at the cave winding all around them, and then concentrated with all his might – with all his burgundy blood-right, his inheritance – and summoned back the ghost that used to wear those bones.

Xefros would later tell Joey that highbloods said people hatched with his dusky red blood could reach out to the dead because of their short lifespans – because they were already dangling so precariously close to death from the second they wriggled out of their eggs.  Joey thought they were just being awful again, the highbloods who said that.  Xefros shook his head and told her he’d _thought_ she would say that, in a soft, wondering voice.

It was almost beautiful, Xefros pulling spectral, gauzy non-life out of those bones. The shade of an alien with choppy wild hair and hollow eyes drifted out of the mirror-rocks…  Out of the air…  And up to him as if up to a fire on a cold night.

“We’re lost,” Xefros told the ghost. “My friends and I, I mean.  Sorry.”

The ghost didn’t have any blood-right, now that they had no blood to speak of.  Highborn or low, it couldn’t matter so much to anyone now, Joey thought.  Xefros apologized all the same.

“Were you lost here, too?” Xefros asked, pouring strength into his voice very precisely, as if they only had one can of soda left and he was trying to divvy it up right.  His broad athlete’s shoulders seemed so solid next to the dead thing.  “Or... Is it, um, possible you know a way out?”

The ghost _did_ know a way out.  They had died after taking a Subjugglator-in-training’s explosive rubber bouncy ball to the gut, not ‘cause of anything like cave-related starvation.  Not exhaustion, not thirst.  Joey could see a pale reflection of those blown-apart insides in the dark mirror rocks, she thought.  Just sort of.  Just out of the corner of her eye.

So that was Joey’s first ghost encounter, but it definitely wasn’t her last. More than anything, it got her thinking, though she wasn’t able to string those thoughts into words right away.

There were ghosts in Alternia’s alleys, Joey learned, hidden in pavement cracks like stubborn weeds and circling restlessly as the Heiress’s drones.  There were ghosts swarming beneath the clown church’s holy Massacres, too, reenacting the carnival rites even in death – like a shadow of the church above.  There were ghosts in the forests, which Xefros sometimes saw shifting between the trees or hung from creaking nooses even if he wasn’t exactly trying to…  And oh, _oh_ , there were too many ghosts by the seaside.  Seadwellers were nearly eternal – their lifespans stretching on and on as their blood grew colder and colder and pumped so slowly it didn’t feel possible – but death followed most of them just the same as the water dripping from their shoes.

Joey and Xefros saw their share of ghosts, sure.  But all the time…  _All the time_ …   No matter how often she tried to talk herself out of it, or reminded herself it was probably impossible, Joey wondered: _“Would Xefros be able to reach my mother’s soul?  From back on earth, farther away than really makes sense…”_

_“He’d need a heck of a lot of that psychic-soda stuff afterwards, I know, but –_

_“— Is it possible I could truly, actually talk to her again?”_

Joey was afraid to ask for more reasons than she could rightly name…   But the question clung in her mind like cave moss, even so, or the ozone smell of eye-lightning in the air.


End file.
